Ode to the Stone Gate" was written by Wang Sheng, the governor of Hanzhong, in the second year of Jianhe in the Eastern Han Dynasty (AD 148). It was an eulogy written by Yang Meng, the Sili captain in the early years of Emperor Shun. The full name is "Ode to the Stone Gate". "Ode to the Lieutenant Colonel Wei Zhiwei Yang Jun" is engraved on the west wall of the Shimen Tunnel at the south end of Baoxie Road in Baocheng, Shaanxi Province. It is 261 cm high and 205 cm wide. The script is Han Li, with 22 lines and three full lines. Eleven words. In 1967, due to the construction of a large reservoir at the site of Shimen, the cliff was carved out of the cliff. In 1971, it was moved to the Hanzhong Municipal Museum and has been preserved to this day.
"Ode to the Stone Gate" on the cliff is one of the famous Han inscriptions in my country. It is called the "Three Odes of the Han Dynasty" together with "Ode to the Yige" in Lueyang and "Ode to the West Narrows" in Chengxian County, Gansu Province. The full text has 655 words, comprehensively and in detail describing how Yang Mengwen, the commander of the Sili School during Emperor Shun's reign in the Eastern Han Dynasty, requested the construction of the Baoxie Road and the process of building the Baoxie Road. "Ode to the Stone Gate" is the finest official script of the Eastern Han Dynasty and a representative work of cliff stone carvings. It had a huge impact on the subsequent development of calligraphy art. It is called a national treasure. Zhang Zuyi of the Qing Dynasty commented: "In the past three hundred years, there have been countless people who have studied Han Dynasty steles, but no one has studied "Ode to the Stone Gate". Because of its strong and unrestrained spirit, timid people dare not learn it." "The word "Cihai" on the cover of "Cihai" published by the Commercial Press before liberation was taken from "Ode to the Stone Gate".
This cliff calligraphy is simple, natural and full of variety. Each stroke starts with a sharp edge, which is implicit and meaningful; the middle movement is slow and solemn; the stroke ends with a sharp edge, which is round and smooth. The writing style throughout the text is free and interesting, and it is known as "Li Zhong Cursive Script". Yang Shoujing's "Ping Bei Ji" said: "His writing style is really like wild cranes and gulls, floating and celestial. All the sparse and beautiful schools of the Six Dynasties emerged from this."
The full name is "Ode to Yang Jun from the Imperial College of the Han Dynasty". Also known as "Ode to Yang Mengwen". Inscribed in November of the second year of Jianhe (148) of the Eastern Han Dynasty, with official script on Moya. 20 lines, ranging from 30 to 31 characters, 261 cm long and 205 cm wide. Tibetan Hanzhong Museum. It is engraved on the southern end of the ancient Baoxie Road, which is now the west wall of the ancient Shimen Tunnel in the Baoxie Valley northeast of Baoxie Town, Hanzhong City, Shaanxi Province. The content is that Wang Sheng, the prefect of Hanzhong, commended Yang Mengwen and others for their achievements in digging the stone gate passage. The text is written by Wang Sheng. The calligraphy on this cliff is written more casually, without any deliberate effort, but reveals an unrestrained, innocent and natural interest, which is cherished by later generations of calligraphers. The Northern Wei Dynasty Li Daoyuan's "Shui Jing Zhu? Mianshui" says: "Baoshui has a small stone gate in the southeast. The gate passes through the mountain passage and is more than six feet long. The stone is carved with the words that Emperor Ming of the Han Dynasty Yong Pingzhong, Sili Xiaoweizhi opened it for Yang Juezhi ", this is the earliest record of "Ode to the Stone Gate". Li Daoyuan is recognized by the world for his proficiency in the study of ancient history and geography, but oversights and oversights are inevitable. There are two inaccuracies in the above records: First, because there is a phrase "Yang Jun Jue's courtesy name Meng Wen" in the ode, the Li family mistakenly thought that this Yang Jun's name was Meng Wen. Many scholars in later generations followed Li's theory without further investigation, so they spread it incorrectly. For example, Ouyang Xiu's "Ji Gu Lu" of the Song Dynasty was based on Li's theory, and Zhao Mingcheng's "Jin Shi Lu" even called "Ode to the Stone Gate" the "Yang Jue Stele". After researching the book "Li Shi" by Hong Shi of the Song Dynasty, it became clear that the word "Jue" here is actually a particle, which can also be interpreted as "qi" or "his", and is not Mr. Yang. name. According to "Huayang Guozhi" quoted by Hong, Yang Jun's real name was Huan and his courtesy name was Mengwen. Second, Li Daoyuan and many people after him thought that the ancient stone gate was dug by Yang Mengwen, which is also inconsistent with historical facts. The construction of the stone gate began as early as the time of Liu Bang, the emperor of the Han Dynasty, but was not completed. According to another famous cliff of Shimen, "The Stone Engraved by Hajun to Open Baoxie Road" clearly records that from the sixth to ninth year of Emperor Ming's reign in the Eastern Han Dynasty (63-66), Hanzhong Prefect Hajun finally completed the task of opening Baoxie and Shimen. Later, due to repeated wars and destruction in the early years of Emperor An, the stone gate was blocked and blocked. In the early years of Emperor Shun's reign, it was restored after repeated requests from Yang Mengwen. Therefore, Yang Mengwen has no direct relationship with the first opening of Shimen. The artistic achievement of "Ode to the Stone Gate" has always been highly praised. The knot is extremely indulgent and stretched, the posture is thin and vigorous, and the mood is elegant and natural. The round pen is mostly used. The strokes start against the front and then return to the front. The strokes in the middle are vigorous and calm, so the strokes are ancient, thick, subtle and full of elasticity. Looking at the whole article, the characters follow the stone momentum, are scattered and scattered, open and close vertically and horizontally, free and easy, full of interest. "Ode to the Stone Gate" is the representative of Qi Zong Zong Yi Yi in the Han Dynasty Li, and is known as the "Cursive Script in Li Zhong". The words "ming", "sheng" and "chan" in the article are written with special vertical strokes, which are rare in Han official stone carvings. "Ode to the Stone Gate" has a great influence on later generations.
Zhang Zuyi of the Qing Dynasty wrote a postscript on this stele: "However, in the past three hundred years, there have been countless people who have studied the Han stele, but no one has learned "Ode to the Stone Gate". This is because of its strong and unrestrained spirit. The timid dare not learn it, and the weak cannot learn it." "Yang Shoujing's "Ping Stele Notes" says: "His writing style is really like wild cranes and gulls, floating in the air, and a few schools of beauty in the Six Dynasties all came from this."
The area around the stone gate at the south entrance of Baoxie Plank Road in Hanzhong, Shaanxi Province. There are more than 160 cliff stone carvings, the most famous of which is the "Thirteenth Grade of Han and Wei Dynasties" cliff stone carvings.
Hanzhong is known as the "Little Jiangnan" due to its humid climate and abundant rainfall. It was also a battleground for ancient military strategists. However, Hanzhong is adjacent to the Qinling Mountains in the north and the Bashan Mountain in the south has extremely inconvenient transportation, which hinders the transportation of materials. Therefore, Hanzhong has a world-famous plank road. That is the Shu Road. Li Bai wrote, "The road to Shu is as difficult as climbing to the sky." The most famous Baoxie Plank Road in Shu Road runs through the Qinling Mountains. The south entrance of the road is called "Baoxie Valley", located in Hanzhong, Shaanxi Province. The north entrance is called "Xiegu", located in Mei County, Shaanxi Province, so it is called "Baoxie Road". The entire valley is 250 kilometers long. The cliffs here are steep and the water on the cliffs is turbulent, making it difficult to build a plank road. Emperor Ming of the Han Dynasty issued an order to dig a tunnel through the mountain in the most dangerous part of Bao Valley. It took 6 years to build a 15-meter-long tunnel through the mountain, which was called "Shimen" in ancient times. The inner wall of Shimen Tunnel is smooth and smooth, with no traces of axes, chisels, drills, etc. How was the stone gate dug? The ancients used pines and cypresses with extremely high fat content as fuel to burn the cliffs for four to five hours, then poured water or vinegar on the hot cliff face to cause it to cool suddenly and crack naturally, and then peeled it off with iron tools. In this way, our ancestors successfully completed this great project more than 1,900 years ago. This is the first artificially dug mountain tunnel in human history. Since the Eastern Han Dynasty, Baoxie Road has been opened and closed due to political and military reasons. Every time it is opened, or recorded or chanted, most of them will be in the form of stone carvings. The "Moya" text engraved on the stone wall near the mountain is very popular among people. The stone carvings on the cliffs of Shimen mainly describe the excavation of the Baoxie plank road, the construction of water conservancy, and the inscriptions. They date back to the Eastern Han Dynasty and down to the Ming and Qing Dynasties, especially in the Yongping period of the Eastern Han Dynasty. "Ode" and "Shimen Inscription" of the Northern Wei Dynasty are the most famous, and have been praised by Chinese and foreign calligraphers of all ages. In the second year of Jianhe of the Eastern Han Dynasty (148), Wang Sheng, the prefect of Hanzhong, was promoted to the "Ode to the Stone Gate", which was carved on stone by the late Sili captain Yang Mengwen. This engraving is known as the originator and model of Cao Li. It is majestic and free. Neat and standardized, but also full of variety, full of emotion, eclectic, informal, unbridled, and full of fun. Although there is not much difference in the thickness of the strokes, each stroke is full of changes, and the brush can be used freely without any modification. , has a natural and bold interest; the calligraphy and painting are thin and hard, the structure is sparse and clear, elegant and graceful, and the brush and official script contain seal characters, grass and lines, which are called "the grass in official script" by calligraphers. "Ode to the Stone Gate" was called Caoli since Kang Youwei. He said in "Guangyi Zhou Shuangji": "The Yang Meng Wen stele (i.e. "Ode to the Stone Gate") is strong and graceful, and it is indistinguishable from "Kai Tong Baoxie Dao" All of them are of profound interest. The characters "Nian", "Sheng" and "Chan" in the stele are very long,...Yang Mengwen and Li Mengchu are the ones in Li Zhongzhi. "Mr. Sun Yat-sen and a generation of calligraphy masters are on the right. Mr. Ren also highly praised Shimen calligraphy. The cover of "Cihai", the first large-scale reference book published in China, is composed of the two characters "ci" and "hai" in "Ode to the Stone Gate".
Chinese characters develop and change with the times. From oracle bone inscriptions and bell and tripod inscriptions of the Yin and Shang Dynasties, to seal scripts of the Zhou and Qin Dynasties, official scripts of the Han Dynasty, regular scripts of the Jin and Wei dynasties, Wei stele, running script, cursive script, and the Song style after the Song Dynasty, it reflects the evolution of calligraphy from application to art, from a single form to different styles, and also Reflects the development and changes of writing materials and carriers. Seal script is drawn on bronze molds or silk, so the shape of the strokes often bends and changes. From the Qin Dynasty, official script began to be written or carved on bamboo slips, so the strokes of official script seem to show the focus of carving with a knife. The Han Dynasty was the transition stage from seal script to official script. The Shimen Stone Carvings in Hanzhong are in an important transition period from seal script to official script. It represents an important stage in the history of the development of Chinese calligraphy that connects the past and the future.
"Ode to the Stone Gate" is the finest official script of the Eastern Han Dynasty and a representative work of cliff carvings. Judging from the layout of the inscription, what is unique about "Ode to the Stone Gate" is that in the 22 lines of the entire stele, the number of words in each line varies from 30 to 31, forming a staggered pattern with rows vertically and not necessarily columns horizontally. . "Ode to the Stone Gate" is praised by future generations for her eclectic and free artistic temperament. It is precisely because of the free writing method of "Ode to the Stone Gate" that a large number of Tongjia characters and polyphonic characters are widely used in the inscriptions. This stone carving was engraved in the ninth year of Yongping in the Eastern Han Dynasty. It is recognized by the calligraphy circle as the earliest and first stone carving among ancient official scripts.
"Ode to the Stone Gate" was written by Wang Jie, a great calligrapher at that time. The "Shimen Inscription" was written by Wang Yuan and engraved by Wu Aren. Among the stone carvings of Shimen, the one that is as famous as "Ode to Shimen" is "Shimen Inscription" carved on the east wall of Shimen in the second year of Yongping in the Northern Wei Dynasty, that is, 509 AD. It records the deeds of Yang Zhi, the governor of Liang and Qin states, who reopened the story of Shimen. . The "Shimen Inscription" is the representative of the cliff carvings in the Northern Wei Dynasty. The modern calligrapher Kang Youwei called the "Shimen Inscription" a "divine product". He said: "The Shimen Inscription is flying and strange, graceful and celestial, like the scattered immortals on Ruoyao Island, and the cranes across it. Luan". Yu Youren also highly praised "Shimen Inscription". Yu Youren liked to write on Wei steles, especially the "Shimen Inscription". In 1930, he came to Hanzhong and saw the "Shimen Inscription" on the cliff for the first time in the Shimen Tunnel. He stopped in front of the "Shimen Inscription" and couldn't calm down for a long time. When I saw "Shimen Inscription", I thought of the martial spirit of the Northern Wei Dynasty. There is a poem like "I visit the stone gate in the morning, write twenty articles in the evening, collect the couplets after hard work, and wet my pillow with tears every night." Yu Youren's calligraphy once benefited from "Shimen Inscription". This shows the status of the calligraphy of "Shimen Inscription" in the history of calligraphy, and the value of "Shimen Inscription" in the history of Chinese calligraphy. This stone carving was engraved in the second year of Yongping in the Northern Wei Dynasty (509). It is unique among stone carvings in Shimen. It is the only one of Wei style calligraphy. In the history of calligraphy, it is still an early Wei style work. It is important for studying the formation of Wei style calligraphy. , is also an important piece of physical information.
In the Shimen area at the south entrance of Baoxie Plank Road, there are more than 160 cliff stone carvings. Among them, the most famous ones that are still well preserved are the cliff stone calligraphy called "Thirteen Products of Han and Wei Dynasties" by Chinese and foreign calligraphy circles. work. These calligraphy works have a considerable status in the history of Chinese calligraphy development and have attracted the attention of Chinese and foreign calligraphy circles.
The main content of the stone carvings on the Shimen cliffs is to describe the excavation of the Baoxie plank road, the construction of water conservancy projects, and the inscriptions. In terms of time span, it dates from the Eastern Han Dynasty to the Ming and Qing Dynasties, especially the "Kaitong" in the Yongping period of the Eastern Han Dynasty. The most famous ones are "The Carved Stones of Baoxie Dao" (known as "The Great Kaitong"), "Ode to the Stone Gate", and "The Stone Gate Inscription" of the Northern Wei Dynasty, and have been praised by Chinese and foreign calligraphers of all ages.
Ouyang Xiu's "Collection of Ancient Records" in the Song Dynasty, Hong Shi's "Li Shi", Zhao Mingcheng's "Inscriptions on Stones" and other works have recorded the stone gate carvings in Hanzhong. Especially since the Qing Dynasty, research and documentation on Hanzhong have been There are more and more people carving stone on the cliffs of Shimen. Since the Qing Dynasty, almost all the more important calligraphy studies and collections of official calligraphy and inscriptions have included works such as Hanzhong's "Ode to the Stone Gate". Qing Lu Zengxiang's "Baqiongshi Epigraphy and Correction", Bi Yuan's "Epigraphy and Stone Records of the Two Han Dynasties", "Guanzhong Scenic Spots Illustrated Records", "Guanzhong Epigraphy and Stone Records", Wang Chang's "Epigraphy and Stone Collection", and "Qianyantang Epigraphy and Stone Postscript", as well as There are records in the "Yi Tong Zhi", provincial, prefecture, prefecture and county chronicles of all dynasties. Yang Shoujing and Kang Youwei, great scholars of the Qing Dynasty, both praised the art of Shimen calligraphy; Mr. Sun Yat-sen and Mr. Yu Youren, the master of calligraphy of the first generation, also highly praised Shimen calligraphy. During the Republic of China, the first large-scale reference book published in China, "Cihai", had a cover that was a collection of the two characters "ci" and "hai" from "Ode to the Stone Gate" in Hanzhong. In recent years, with the opening up of culture, many calligraphers from the Japanese calligraphy circle come to Hanzhong every year to pay homage to the stone gate carvings, and they all give high praise. When Mr. Tanedani Ogishu, an authority in Japanese calligraphy circles, visited Han in 1988, he personally wrote the inscription "Hanzhong Shimen, Master of Japan". His stone carvings still stand in the Hanzhong Museum. Every year when tourists from Japan and other countries come to Hanzhong, they admire the calligraphy carved on the cliffs of the Hanzhong Shimen, and they are all amazed.
Chinese characters develop and change with the times. From oracle bone inscriptions and bell and tripod inscriptions of the Yin and Shang Dynasties, to seal scripts of the Zhou and Qin Dynasties, official scripts of the Han Dynasty, regular scripts of the Jin and Wei dynasties, Wei stele, running script, cursive script, and the Song style after the Song Dynasty, it reflects the evolution of calligraphy from application to art, from a single form to different styles, and also Reflects the development and changes of writing materials and carriers. For example, oracle bone inscriptions are usually written directly on animal bones with sharp instruments, so the writing force is short and simple; seal scripts are drawn on bronze molds or silk, so the pen shape is often curved and varied; official scripts began to appear in the Qin Dynasty, which were written or engraved on On the bamboo slips, the official calligraphy strokes seem to show the emphasis of carving with a knife. The Han Dynasty was the transition stage from seal script to official script, and in the late Eastern Han Dynasty, it was the mature stage of official script. The Shimen Stone Carvings in Hanzhong are in an important transition period from seal script to official script. It represents an important stage in the history of the development of Chinese calligraphy that connects the past and the future.